W|W: The Wearable Weekly – Fossil & TAG get connected

Welcome to The Wearable Weekly, your trusted guide to all things wearable tech. If you only have time to read one thing about wearables this week, this is it. Don’t forget to subscribe to The Wearable Weekly using the form below to make sure it hits your email inbox every week!

Industry Highlights

Swiss watchmakers make a major wearable play: TAG Heuer officially entered the wearable tech space with the launch of its much anticipated Android Wear enabled and Intel-powered  Connected Watch which will retail for $1650 CAD ($1500 USD). Meanwhile, Fossil Group acquired leading health wearable company Misfit for $260 million USD.

VR continues to see tremendous growth: Comcast and Time Warner invested heavily into NextVR joining a $30.5 million round. Meanwhile a ton of VR content launched on the Oculus store including a 1980s arcade in time for the official consumer version of the Samsung Gear VR which opened pre-orders in the US.

Statistics & Forecasts

70% of Apple Watch wearers spot at least “one to two” Apple Watch wearers daily says Wristly (Watchaware)

34% of people are not buying Apple Watch because of price, the same number that are not buying it because it is new and untested, finds Wristly survey (Business Insider)

Device Announcements

ARM unveiled the new Cortex-A35 processor designed for wearables and IoT (PC Mag)

ASUS confirms it is working on a pair of AR glasses to be released next year (CNET)

Fit Pay and ConnectedDevice announce Pagaré, a smartstrap for Pebble that provides contactless payments (Slashgear)

Samsungs Gear VR opens up for pre-orders (TIME)

Chinese Mobvoi unveils the Ticwatch running its own operating system Ticwear (TechCrunch)

Xiaomi unveiled its second generation Mi Band with heart rate monitoring, the Mi Band Pulse (TechCrunch)

Funding, Crowdfunding & M&A

Fossil acquires wearable maker Misfit for $260 million (MobileSyrup)

Comcast Corp. and Time Warner invest in NextVR, joining a $30.5 million round (WSJ)

Eyefluence Eye Interaction System closes $14 Million Investment Series B round (TechCrunch)

Major Milestones

Google brings cellular connectivity to Android Wear starting with the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE (MobileSyrup)

BLOCKS announces partnership with AT&T and EE times to bring cellular connectivity to its modular smartwatch (PhoneArena)

Oculus releases the Oculus Arcade VR app (Mashable)

Land’s End, Bandit Six and a “slew” of other games hit the Oculus store (TechCrunch)

Researchers at Human-Computer Interaction lab (HCI) at the Hasso Plattner Institute have created Impacto, an armband prototype that re-creates the experience of actually being punched (Gizmodo)

Carnegie Mellon researchers develop Tomo, a strap prototype for smartwatches that can read muscle effort (Gizmodo)

Disney & Carnegie Mellon demonstrate EM-Sense enabled smartwatch which detects the world around it (Wired)

Japanese corporation NEC announced it has developed an augmented-reality device that can display a virtual keyboard on forearms using smart eyeglasses and a smartwatch (TechTimes)

easyJet and CuteCircuit unveil connected airline uniforms to be piloted in 2016 (Mashable)

Rumours

Samsung working on entry-level activity tracker (Ubergizmo)

Microsoft rumoured to be working on a clip-on wearable featuring Cortana (Windows Central)

Samsung Gear S2 may get iOS support later this year (MobileSyrup)

 Subscribe to The Wearable Weekly

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Wearable Weekly using the form below to make sure it hits your email inbox every week!